art makes us more alive.

No Car = Better Neighborhood

We live in a neighborhood where we know our neighbors. Our children have friends to play with next door. When we need a truck to haul stuff, we check in with Ron who lives near the park. When we go on our family vacation next week Eric around the corner on Hope street will be feeding and watering the rabbits and chickens. (Our daughter Dove just did the same for Eric's rabbit and chickens last week.) Dave and Barb live around the other corner. I sang at their wedding over twenty years ago.

I believe not owning a car for the last six years has forced a certain kind of radical localness to our lives that has made our neighborhood more potent and alive. It has enabled us to cultivate a community that is in walking distance.

Wendall Berry has this to say,

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.”